Well I completed my whirlwind weekend in Syracuse. A lot has been said about the Spring Game already, so let us kick a good program while it is down, shall we?

I first began my weekend by stopping by ESPN 1260 on James Street in Syracuse to get a nice little tour of the radio station given my Mr. Brent Axe of “On The Block” fame. I saw the studios all owned by the parent company housed in the same building including 93Q, 95X, and some station called Lite Rock 105.9, which after living in Syracuse for five years I had still never heard of. Axe’s show is pretty loose I have to say. Just Axe and his executive producer have a meeting before the air time at 3:00pm, then its go time. Axe had me lead off his show with some Syracuse talk (because let’s face it, I am not up on the Crunch or Chiefs like I should be), mostly focusing on the Spring Game and the lacrosse team. It was fun to be back in an actual radio studio again, as it has been three years since the last “Brian & John Radio Experience” at WERW 1570 in the basement of the Schine Student Center. The studio itself is small, only about eight feet by eight feet. Axe mostly stands during the show and he has to instant message his producer during the show if they want to communicate. By comparison, 93Q and 95X have studios that are probably five times larger than the ESPN booth. My friend John and I hung around for the first hour of Axe’s show in the studio, listening to some stories about guests he has had, as well as make about seven Revenge of the Nerds references. All in all a solid start.

My compatriot John and I then checked into the Genesee Grand Hotel, which is considerably nicer than the last time I stayed there due to renovations. We then attended the lacrosse game. I will gloss over that as I will recap that in the Lacrosse Weekly later this week.

The real meat of the weekend was the annual Spring Game. The Spring Game was interesting. It started with several drills with the offensive line and defensive linemen, the secondary versus the wide receivers, and the linebackers versus the running backs. Now, I like college football as much as the next guy, but even I find watching drills very boring. Plus, what are they even trying to showcase? Is it just to prove that they can play without pulling a hamstring? Either way that was broken up by people trying to catch punts from Rob “Heisman” Long, who also happened to shank a few. Real encouraging. Only one person out of three managed to catch one for $99, but watching someone who does not usually catch punts try to do so is absolutely one of the most hilarious sights you can witness. Then it was the very talked about “Thud Drill”. It was also the return of Delone Carter and Curtis Brinkley, complete with large yellow medical shirts screaming “do not hit me” to the other players. As stated on Saturday, it was basically an organized slap game. There was nothing cool to report on this. Then eventually, about 45 minutes later, the actually “spring game” part began. The scrimmage seemed to be going at half speed, except for a few monster hits that the defense put on some of the offensive players. Other than the quality tackles, and a few excellent passes, there was nothing really notable in this game. Cameron Dantley, or “Cantley” as I named him last year made a few excellent throws and will push Andrew Robinson to get better, which is always great to see. Other than that, the Spring Game was not that exciting, or frankly even that fun. After I left the Carrier Dome I laid on the quad with some good friends afterwards enjoying the sights, and that seemed to be more enjoyable than watching what was put on the field. It was a boring exercise showing me why people are down on football, which is sad. My estimation of the crowd, a point of contention, was around 4,800 people, but that number is obviously disputed. Either way I think the most compelling discovery was that of the Vanilla and Chocolate Cookiewich at the concession stands. I still went with all vanilla.

My weekend ended with a banquet celebrating the 25th Anniversary of my fraternity and our sister sorority, therefore I will say congratulations to the Eta Phi Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi, and the Eta Alpha Chapter of Tau Beta Sigma. May our success continue for years to come!

Moral of the story, the spring game was not that fantastic. I am pretty disappointed that they do not put in the effort to appeal to fans more, or at least do something more entertaining or encouraging. This leaves me wanting not to get season tickets, but feel glad that I currently do not own any. This was supposed to inspire the hope springing eternal. It inspired more negative talk from me and several other bloggers. Perhaps one day Syracuse will figure out how to market football effectively. But until more winning happens, that will probably not happen.

Below are some videos of events we saw from our seats in Section 214. H/T to JBren.